Innovation Sessions

Breakout Sessions

#Globaleducation 2.0: Connecting Students Through Innovative Learning Experiences

The heart and mind of a global education is enabling young people to shape a better, shared future for the world. Providing innovative learning opportunities for both students and faculty to interact with the global community is key to understanding that global education is a dimension that runs through the K-12 curriculum. Join Marymount faculty and students as we uncover strategies for success weaving global strategies in your curriculum, as seen through the lens of several Marymount initiatives, including the Women in Our World Summit, the STEMxYouth Summit, the Senior Online Symposium, and the Shared_Studios Portal Program.

PRESENTER: Eric Walters, Director of STEM Education | Marymount School of New York (USA)


Assessment 2.0: How We Help Girls Own Learning, Embrace Feedback, and Pursue Mastery

Grade obsession undermines learning and heightens anxiety and shame in the face of setbacks. In this session, learn two assessment strategies that give agency, accountability, and ownership to students. Standards-based grading and goal-setting rubrics allow students to align their internal goals with goals set in the classroom. Participants will work in small groups with colleagues to explore strategies to apply a new assessment method to their own classrooms.

PRESENTERS: Rachel Simmons, Girls Research Scholar in Residence; Tegan Morton, Science Teacher; and Georgina Emerson, Faculty, History | The Hewitt School (USA)


Classroom Experiences that Motivate and Engage: What Girls and Their Teachers Told Us

This session is for middle and high school educators of girls (both teachers and administrators). In it we discuss the findings from our national study of nearly 2,000 students and teachers from 14 girls’ schools about the lessons that most engage and motivate them. Covering pedagogical approaches as well as qualities of engaging classrooms, we explore the best lessons for girls, why they are effective, and the ways in which gender does (and does not) matter in the classroom. Educators will depart with concrete approaches to captivate and motivate their students.

PRESENTERS: Shannon Andrus, Educational Researcher | Teaching Girls Well (USA) and Charlotte Jacobs, Associate Director | Penn Independent School Teaching Residency (USA)


Curriculum Innovation to Engage Girls in Interdisciplinary Design Projects with Authentic Audiences

This session will inspire teachers and administrators to develop inspired learning experiences for girls related to design, technology, and science. We will share six examples of Interdisciplinary Units that link design, technology, science, and service. We introduce how these experiences, structured around a design cycle and focused on empowerment, global citizenship, and academic rigor, have energized and excited our girls at Branksome Hall Asia to research design solutions for issues of significance. From creating and coding micro-greenhouses to building cognitive-enhancing computer games for the elderly, we hope our examples will inspire. Group discussion and sharing during this session will provide an opportunity for participants to network and lay the foundation for future collaboration.

PRESENTERS: Aidan Hammond, Head of Design Technology and Kathy Binns, Head of Science | Branksome Hall Asia (South Korea)


Delivering a Creative Junior Curriculum Using the Indoor and Outdoor Classroom

The Reggio Emilia approach is a genuinely creative way to deliver the junior school curriculum, and it can provide pupils with the breadth and depth required to achieve exceptional outcomes. It effectively supports the development of independent thinking, skills of enquiry, and an understanding of the world, citizenship, and collective responsibility. Despite the title “Forest Schools,” you don’t need a forest to offer opportunities that use outdoor spaces to extend creative learning. Children are inspired by the risk-taking nature of the activities and develop their problem-solving skills in an innovative way.

PRESENTERS: Jo Duncan, Head, and Heidi Hughes, Head of Junior School | The Royal High School Bath (GDST) (UK) and Jane Prescott, Head | Portsmouth High School (GDST) (UK)


Design Thinking in the Middle School: A Dynamic Approach to Innovation and Creative Problem Solving

Design Thinking is an approach to innovation and creative problem solving that promotes collaboration, critical thinking, iteration, communication, empathy, and presentation skills. At both Kent Place School and Lincoln School, middle school students have participated in design thinking projects where they were asked to generate solutions to real-life problems. Session participants will learn the benefits of teaching girls to use the process, from the early stages of notice and empathize, through ideate and prototype, to test and share. Come experience firsthand a sampling of program activities. By doing design thinking, participants will learn the process in this dynamic and interactive session and gain resources for using it in their classrooms.

PRESENTERS: Erin Hennessy, English Department Chair and Director of Girls’ Leadership Institute; Maura Crowe, MS/US Science / STEM Coordinator; and Cheryl Kaplun, MS Math / 7th grade Team Leader | Kent Place School (USA) and Deborah Hanney, Middle School Director, and Susan Amsler-Akacem, Technology Innovator and Ed Tech Department Head | Lincoln School (USA); and Allison Butler, Associate Professor of Applied Psychology, Bryant IDEA 2018 Program Director | Bryant University (USA)


Fighting Gender with Gender

Margrét Pála presents her theories, based on 27 years of research, on how to break children free from obsolete gender roles. Generally known as the Hjalli Model, single-sex settings are used to reinforce each gender in specific areas and creating a safe space where nothing is considered boyish or girlish. In a gender binary world, how do we reserve the culture of the genders whilst promoting equality and diversity? The Hjalli Model operates in 14 kindergartens and 4 primary schools around Iceland. Margrét Pála has been granted numerous awards and recognition for her work, including The Knight‘s Cross of the Icelandic Order of the Falcon from the President of Iceland for innovation in education.

PRESENTER: Margrét Pála, Educator and Founder | Hjalli Ltd. (Iceland)


Global Issues Facing Girls and Women are Local Issues, Too

What is our charge as 21st century educators to prepare students to be responsible global citizens? This session will explore the collaborative development of a Girls Empowerment travel program to Guatemala between three partners committed to global citizenship education for students: GALS, Envoys, and Starfish. Our goal is to advance the Girl Effect movement by facilitating intercultural partnership where students are in the driver’s seat confronting key challenges related to women’s rights. How can girls from different socio/economic, cultural, and geographic backgrounds join forces and help close the gap of gender equity worldwide? Participants will leave with ideas on how to answer this question based on our story of creative partnership, financial resourcing, and intentional curriculum development.

PRESENTERS: Annie Peuquet, Director of Partnerships | Envoys (USA) and Jenn Green, Dean of Students | Girls Athletic Leadership School (USA)


Healthy and Powerful Self Image of Gender: The Hjalli Model

The Hjalli Model is a single sex school system, strengthening each gender to grow as individuals, rather than merely as boys and girls according to stereotypes. Through compensation work, where they are given abundant space, the girls are coached to become independent, self-assertive leaders and most of all to gain a positive, tolerant, and compassionate disposition towards themselves.

PRESENTERS: Sigrún Gyða Matthíasdóttir, Head of School; Íris Helga Baldursdóttir, Head of School; and Áki Árnason, Assistant Headmaster | Hjalli-Model (Iceland)


Making “Making” Work: Engaging Learners and Industry Partners in Maker Space Development

The session narrates the development of the Philippines’ first integrated makerspace, the Miriam College – Henry Sy, Sr. Innovation Center. It is rooted in the vision of integrating innovation across the curriculum through DREAMS – Design, Robotics, Engineering/Entrepreneurship, Arts, Mathematics, and Social Responsibility. It focuses on how the facility has built and expanded its programs, policies, processes, and physical plant through strategic industry partnerships that guarantee its quality, relevance, and sustainability. More importantly, it illustrates how learners from various levels were involved in the development process. Thus, the presentation hopes to inspire other schools as they prepare their respective makerspace development roadmaps.

PRESENTER: Celeste Matias, Teacher | Miriam College (Philippines)


Media, Myths, and Misinformation: A Chemistry/Government Experiment in Calling BS

Students are awash in information. Yet, so much of that information comes to our students out of context. The questions we posed to our students were: How do you know what to believe?; and, How do you take action based on your knowledge? We developed this interdisciplinary unit to empower students to navigate their media environment and to think critically about the data they consume both in and out of the classroom. We want to share what happens when we teach girls how to call BS on unsubstantiated information and how they can take positive action to communicate their knowledge.

PRESENTERS: Catherine Cresson, Upper School Science Teacher; Carolyn Tapp, Upper School History/Government; Lucy B., Class of 2019; and Lucy B., Class of 2019 | The Louise S. McGehee School (USA)


Meet Me in the Middle: Expanding College and Career Readiness Options for Middle and High School Girls

The Baltimore Leadership School for Young Women (BLSYW) is a single sex public charter school serving more than 500 students in 6th – 12th grades. BLSYW students represent every zip code in Baltimore City and enter the school at varying levels of proficiencies. 100% of the school’s first, second, and third classes (2016, 2017, and 2018) graduated and were accepted to college. This presentation will highlight key instructional practices and college readiness strategies that are implemented at each grade level to ensure that all students are both high school and college ready as indicated through standardized test scores and a decrease in the need for remediation.

PRESENTERS: Chevonne Hall, Middle School Principal; Paula Dofat, Director of College Counseling; and Cristina Jacobs-Easton, Upper School Principal | Baltimore Leadership school for Young Women (USA)


A Meeting of the Minds: The Power of Collaboration Across Single-Gender School Leadership

Through this session administrators and school leaders will learn about the model for leadership collaboration used by a network of single-gender public schools to support leadership, program development, academic enrichment, and college readiness opportunities for students across different districts and communities. Through this collaborative framework, principals are able to share best practices, data, and ideas for enhancement opportunities along with strategies for how to implement in effective ways at their own campuses.

PRESENTERS: Berta Fogerson, Principal Liaison| Young Women’s Preparatory Network (USA) and Delia McLerran, Principal | Young Women’s Leadership Academy of San Antonio (USA)


Project G.I.R.L: Experiences from a Girl-centered, Project-based Classroom

What does girl-centered, project-based learning look like in action? Two years ago, Miss Hall’s created Project G.I.R.L. (Gumption in Real Life), a class where students take the lead in designing curriculum and dedicate themselves to examining important issues affecting teenage girls. In this session, former students present alongside their teacher to highlight their classroom experience, their research and design process, and their original podcast work. Presenters will also discuss the class’s culminating projects that ranged from a confidence workshop with middle school girls to a schoolwide conference promoting healthy sexual relationships and inclusive sexual education.

PRESENTERS: Rebecca Cook-Dubin, English Department Chair; MaryCatherine Balcom, Class of 2017; and Shanti Nelson, Class of 2018 | Miss Hall’s School (USA)


The Relationship Between Engagement and Instruction

At the Public Preparatory Network, we are determined to develop our students into resilient young scholars of bold intellect. Through this session, we will explore how to engage girls in ways that build their sense of ownership and authority. Join us as we discuss the structures and instructional approaches we utilize in our tuition-free elementary and middle schools in New York City. Participants will walk out with an understanding of school-wide systems that build a culture of joy and rigor; practices that allow teachers to integrate character education and collaborative learning in the classroom; and opportunities to plan how they will implement these techniques in their school’s professional development plan.

PRESENTER: Francis Manoli, Kindergarten Teacher | Girls Prep Lower East Side Elementary School (USA)


Valuing Future Ready Females

Two case studies from different countries will share the journey, practical tips, enablers, and barriers to identifying the skills and dispositions needed for girls to thrive and for schools to innovate in the area of girls’ wellbeing and enterprise. From New Zealand, learn about how to create a common language for underlying values and how to make these authentic in your school, from the posters on the wall to the real life examples, where the skills and dispositions of the “future ready” student are identified, back mapped and practiced in the classroom. From Australia, learn how staff can be empowered to “make an idea happen”, revitalise approaches to the wellbeing development of young girls to young women, and encourage an enterprising mindset from PK–12 which prepares girls for their future. Pioneering new initiatives, such as the “SHE Journal”, will inspire you to make new connections, and the session will draw on current academic research and real-life data, as well as give practical tools and models that could be transferred to other settings.

PRESENTERS: Fran Reddan, Principal; Camilla Gaff, Teacher; and Kylie Federici, Teacher | Mentone Girls’ Grammar (Australia); and Jackie Barron, Principal and Judy Maw, Assistant Principal | St Hilda’s Collegiate School (New Zealand)


INSPIRE! Sessions

Bridging the Divide with Digital Humanities

Digital Humanities (DH) is a subject that encompasses technology, critical thinking, creativity, and scholarship in a way that lives online and allows individuals and groups to participate as both producers and consumers. It is inherently interdisciplinary, collaborative, and accessible but focuses on text and data related to the humanities and social sciences. The Digital Humanities Initiative at Harpeth Hall (DH@HH) is a new programmatic and pedagogical opportunity launched in August 2017 to reimagine the ways that teachers and students approach content and learning. In this session, Dr. Pethel will present the process creating this programmatic, co-curricular initiative and provide guidance for schools looking to do expand into the field of Digital Humanities. She will also show student work and projects associated with the field of DH, which can be found at hhdigitalhumanities.org.

PRESENTER: Mary Ellen Pethel, Social Science teacher, DH Coordinator, Archivist | Harpeth Hall School (USA)


The Case for Rich Experiences for Girls in Elementary Mathematics: Why a Math Workshop Model Works

Girls need a strong foundation in numeracy that includes logical reasoning, creative and flexible problem solving, and convincing arguments for their thinking. The world they will work in tomorrow will be much different than today. A math workshop model allows for the development of a growth mindset, and builds opportunities to support girls’ development in mathematics, to take risks, make mistakes, and persevere. This session will explore how deep understanding of the concepts that underpin mathematics will enable students to apply strategies to different scenarios, generalize their thinking, and fully engage in the inherent creativity of the discipline of mathematics.

PRESENTER: Emily Stewart, Kindergarten Teacher | Stone Ridge School of the Sacred Heart (USA)


Exploring PBAs: Brought to You by the Letter P

The goal of this session is to empower teachers with ideas and models to support successful implementation of Performance Based Assessments throughout a class curriculum. This session explores why using PBAs is enriching, allows for differentiation, and provides the opportunity for girls to apply and create knowledge. This session also examines the idea of backwards design in order to create a meaningful PBA where the outcomes can be measured effectively. Adopting PBAs at your school allows for academics and real world opportunities to collide.

PRESENTERS: Lindsey Tonks, History and Social Studies Teacher and Allison Dean, Science Teacher | Academy of the Holy Cross (USA)


Flipped Learning: What We’ve Learned and What’s Next?

After initially dealing with the challenges of posting math lessons online, Ketri is thrilled to share the journey she has been on with her students. From continuous progress to differentiated instruction to cooperative learning in the classroom, the possibilities are endless! Ketri was influential in spearheading the pilot of a “Flex” class where students of different ages and grade levels have been working independently on a continuous progress model. Ketri’s role as a teacher has changed dramatically over the last few years. She no longer lectures but instead guides her students through mastery of learning and helps them advocate for themselves and their learning. Ketri’s initiatives in the classroom are supported by the administration and are helping to shift the culture of the school from a grading culture to a learning culture.

PRESENTERS: Ketri Wilkes, Senior School Math and Rita Trautmann, Director of the Centre for Learning | Balmoral Hall School (Canada)


Hack This: Designing an All-girls Hackathon

Come to this behind-the-scenes session to learn the joys and challenges of creating an all-school hackathon that is largely designed and led by students. Explore the trajectory of a now-signature program from its inception by a first-year academic technologist and Girls Who Code club members who attended a college hackathon and created one of their own for students in grades 5-12. Now thriving in its second year at National Cathedral School, the NCS event has expanded to include multiple coding, robotics, and design thinking challenges. The “by students, for students” model encourages playful exposure to technology and marries the best of the student-led classroom model to the academic and creative risk-taking and mistake-making we encourage girls to seek. Session participants will receive a blueprint for their own hackathons, from lesson plans to hardware and software recommendations.

PRESENTER: Frances Cortez O’Connor, Academic Technology Integrationist | National Cathedral School (USA)


Integrating STEAM and Project-Based Learning into the Humanities Curriculum

This session explores practical, in-class examples that combine our focus on STEAM with our Humanities curriculum and learning expectations. Through open-ended, student-centered projects, students developed their own artifacts to explore aspects of modern and historical France in French 2 and 3. While developing and applying linguistic skills, students delved into primary sources and incorporated these into projects created within our new Innovation Lab. These projects support the transition to student driven and determined teaching through which their excitement about a subject allows them to create their own learning paths.

PRESENTER: Anne Mueller, French Teacher and Dorm Lead | Foxcroft School (USA)


Making Time and Space for Girls

In this workshop we will share details of our journey towards innovation. We will explain our process and priorities that brought us to change the academic schedule for grades 6-12 students, which includes a genius block for all students. While we experienced the pros and cons of a new schedule, we planned and built a Center for Innovation where girls have ample space to design. Our goal is to share with teachers and school leaders behind-the-scenes processes, challenges, and victories as we reworked time, created space, and revised curriculum, leading girls to learn through doing.

PRESENTERS: Julia Gentile, Director of Studies and Elizabeth Woodall, Director of Upper School | Kent Place School (USA)


Reimagining a Classroom on a Budget

As our STEAM initiatives continue to evolve, our physics lab has also become our design thinking hub and our quasi-makerspace, despite the limitations of the space. With limited funding to purchase functional and easily movable furniture, we decided to practice what we preach by designing and building our own modifications to the room at a fraction of the cost. Now, after several iterations, lab benches are wheeled and easily movable and each bench is covered with whiteboard adhesive, making a more practical and engaging space. Our maker makeover was accomplished without breaking the bank.

PRESENTER: Christianne Loupelle, Teacher, STEAM Team Leader, Science Department Head | Trafalgar School For Girls (Canada)


Resilient Readers!

How can we encourage our students to rebound from their mistakes and shake off the ever-increasing quest for perfection? This interactive workshop will guide participants through a series of active reading strategies that not only engender compassion and deep empathic reading across the curriculum but also build students’ compassion for, and resiliency with, their own limitations, as well as bolster their problem-solving skills to boost confidence and empower leadership skills. By practicing these strategies with a model text, the participants of this workshop are bound to have an enjoyable learning experience on both a personal and professional level.

PRESENTER: Hope Blosser, English Faculty | The Convent of the Sacred Heart School (USA)


Running a Library at an All-girls School

Learn some tips and tricks for running a library at an all girl’s school and discover some ideas to help promote reading and better research skills with girls in grades 5-12.

PRESENTER: Erin Moyer, Director of Library Media Services | St. Paul’s School for Girls (USA)


Say Yes: Cultivating Independent, Passion-Based Learning

This hands-on session engages participants in designing an interdisciplinary student Capstone project. We explore how independent, passion-based projects can help girls develop research skills, organization, creativity, and critical thinking, leading to greater motivation, engagement, confidence, and self-directed learning. Imagining the project through the lens of students’ needs and interests, we will design components including the research question, community involvement, tangible artifact, and mode of presentation, giving rise to discussion about ways we mentor and assess individualized, independent learning, and the benefits and possibilities of freely-designed passion projects that keep girls at the center of their own education.

PRESENTERS: Sharon Kounovsky, Academic Dean and Jennifer Goetz-Bixby, Science/Math Faculty | Buffalo Seminary (USA)


Survey Said! Examining Student Opinion on Global Warming

According to a Yale study, only 13% of Americans correctly identified that almost all climate scientists have concluded that human-induced global warming is happening. But how do high school students across the globe form their opinion on this important international topic? Come learn how students in the senior elective Atmospheric Science at the Marymount School of New York designed and conducted a global survey on student opinion on global warming and climate and hear from the students as they discuss the significance of their results.

PRESENTER: Eric Walters, Director of STEM Education | Marymount School of New York (USA)


Teachers Podcasting: Connecting Education to Modern Radio

Learn basic skills and organization for joining the podcast revolution. Teaching is an infinitely rich field of stories, perspectives, and opportunities for creating compelling audio of interest to everyone with connections to school communities. Participants in this session will learn how a group of eight teachers at Stone Ridge School from three age divisions collaborate to produce and distribute an education podcast, Lunch Duty Podcast, now available on the web and iTunes. Topics include coordinating a team of people with demanding full-time jobs, strategies for including students, an introduction to basic audio technology, web distribution, and an invitation to contribute to a new media group by and for teachers.

PRESENTERS: Kenneth Woodard, Upper School History Department Chair | Stone Ridge School of the Sacred Heart (USA) and Urvi Morrison, CEO & Founder | Strategic EdTech (SET) (USA)


Using GarageBand to Teach Music Theory

In this session, we will learn basic GarageBand skills that any music instructor can use to teach music theory. Music theory is found in every musical experience at school and is woven through every music teacher’s lessons. GarageBand is an iPad program that appeals to the novice student while also holding vast possibilities for the advanced musician. And, it is also an easy-to-use tool for teachers of varying comfort levels with technology. Many topics will be covered, including form, harmony, ostinato, timbre, texture, and instrumentation. iPads will be provided for the session; feel free to bring your own iPad with GarageBand installed.

PRESENTER: Erin Camburn, Middle and Upper School Music Teacher | Stuart Country Day School of the Sacred Heart (USA)


Who Holds the Bag? Technology as a Tool to Foster Confidence and Independence

Ever notice a correlation between independence and confidence? What can girls learn by making mistakes? We will share hands-on ways we have found to build resilience, develop a growth mindset, and empower girls to become responsible for their own learning and growth. By becoming creative problem solvers, students become more independent and begin “carrying their own bag”.

PRESENTERS: Karen Roberts, Lower School Technology Integration and Michelle Goldsmith, Lower School Technology Integration | The Hockaday School (USA)


SNAP! Sessions

Emotion Shoot-out: Using Augmented and Virtual Reality to Express Emotions

Recent classroom projects at St. Catherine’s School in Richmond Virginia used 3D CAD modeling to represent emotions. Two presentation modes of these emotions were selected. One, Augmented Reality: These emotion models were then linked to 2D placeholder targets. These targets, when viewed through a cell phone camera displayed the 3D emotion model. Two, Virtual Reality: the 3D models were placed into a virtual gallery where students were encouraged to “blast away” at these emotions. Software used: Sculptris, ENTiTi, Unreal Engine.

PRESENTER: Jim Robb, Digital Design Teacher, Associate Director of Marketing and Communication | St. Catherine’s School (USA)


Improving Geometry Processes  through Specific Single-sex Strategies and Motivation

This SNAP! session shows the impact on fifth grade students in a math class that by using some plastic arts resources and Minecraft games, students are led to analyze, interpret, and solve problems related to three-dimensional representations as well as geometry concepts such as symmetry, angles and volume. The class starts from concrete models of students’ favorite cartoons to similar constructions in Minecraft. The impact of this lesson is measured by questions connected to the motivation of the students. They ultimately are able to visualize and recognize the relationships between different 2D and 3D shapes.

PRESENTER: Erika Liseth Hernández, Math Teacher | ASPAEN Gimnasio Iragua (Colombia)


The Neurobiology of the “Aha!” Moment and its Role in Learning

Is there something that distinguishes insight phenomena (“Aha”’ or “lightbulb” moments) from “everyday” learning on a neurobiological level? Or is all learning, on some level, an “Aha!” moment? This presentation will uncover the neurobiology of the “Aha!” moment, as well as its significance in learning (whether or not learning that occurs at the moment of insight is any more desirable or effective than other, “everyday” learning processes). The recent suggestion in the literature that mood and brain preparation can assist in “leading” students to an “Aha!” moment will be considered, as will the wider educational applications of insight phenomena.

PRESENTER: Ellen Moffatt, Head of Year 9 | Korowa Anglican Girls’ School (Australia)


Using an Online Flex-book in the Classroom

In this session, attendees will learn about the CK-12 platform that offers educators a free tool to create and personalize their own online textbook and link it to a learning management system. The platform includes personalized assessments, interactive simulations, video and audio explanations and links to different external tools. The experience of creating a ninth grade physics course in the Bryn Mawr School for Girls in Baltimore will be presented.

PRESENTER: Monia Cheikh, Physics teacher | Bryn Mawr School for Girls (USA)


What We Gave and What We Got: Re-imagining Community Service

The Ethel Walker School has taken a new approach to community service by forming a community partnerships program where students provide service in the community while gaining important life skills. During the 2017 tax season, 24 students and adult volunteers performed 700 hours of community service by preparing tax returns for low income families in Hartford, CT. The girls completed 14 hours of tax preparation training, including learning about the economic realities facing families and tax law while acquiring financial literacy skills. They and other volunteers secured $17M in refunds including more than $4M in the earned income tax credit.

PRESENTER: Michelle Helmin, Director of External Affairs | The Ethel Walker School (USA)